Video: Murtha suggests impeachment if President doesn’t “compromise”

posted at 12:46 pm on April 29, 2007 by Ian

Rep. John Murtha suggested the possibility of impeachment to “influence” the President to “compromise” over funding for Iraq. Is it just me or does John Murtha sound like Vito Corleone? Does Murtha not know he is talking about impeaching the President of the United States because he is not compromising with the will of the far-left of Congress? That’s neither a high crime nor even a misdemeanor, which are the behaviors that are supposed to trigger impeachment. Murtha’s suggestion is outside the bounds of what Congress is supposed to do to influence the behavior of a sitting president, to say the least.

Breaking on Hot Air

Blowback

Note from Hot Air management: This section is for comments from Hot Air's community of registered readers. Please don't assume that Hot Air management agrees with or otherwise endorses any particular comment just because we let it stand. A reminder: Anyone who fails to comply with our terms of use may lose their posting privilege.

Trackbacks/Pings

Comments

Well, hell, if law is off the table Big Murtha, why not just go up there and beat his a%% until he compromises? Man, here we had to wait until Clinton broke the law to impeach him; all we had to do was find something he wouldn’t compromise on and then we could have impeached him.
Let’s see, what other ways can congress influence the President…um..hey, they could write a law that President Bush is not allowed to breathe…and then they could write another law that he’s not allowed to veto the ‘No President Bush Breathing Law’. They’d have him in a conundrum and he’d be sure to compromise then, or maybe just pass out, but hey, that’s something. Man, it’s fun being lib. Nothing has to make sense. Someone doesn’t cooperate, just throw them out..or kill them. Murtha must be channeling Putin’s way of dealing with polical opponenets.

The Left has no respect for Rule of Law. There is absolutely no reason to call for or act for impreachment of President Bush. He is on the downside of his last two years in office, forever.
This has got to a combination of the following:
1) Payback for Clinton’s impeachment humiliation. Payback to Republicans, doesn’t matter if they’ve nothing.
2) Reliving the “perverse glory” days of Watergate, Vietnam and Nixon.
There’s nothing constructive in any of this for the nation.
Horowitz was right : The Destructive Generation.

I firmly believe they are going to try it. Every dirty trick in the book between now and next summer. Anything to confuse the public plays right into their hands. Everyone here keeps up with all the MSM and blogs but how many are we (on either side of the fence)? The general public can’t find Canada on a map.

If I were the President, I’d simply say, “You want a Constitutional crisis? I’ll give you a Constitutional crisis.” And then I would issue an executive order calling for all executive branch employees to cease cooperation with Congress as regards responding to subpoenas and I would instruct the Marshall’s office, DOJ, and all other federal law enforcement bodies to ignore any Congressional orders to arrest executive branch employees for failing to appear. I would then immediately call for the Attorney General to immediately begin investigations of Speaker Pelosi and others for violations of the Logan Act. And we can go on from there…

Andy Jackson’s my inspiration. :) He’s also one of my favorite presidents. Any man who can take take a shot in a duel, stay standing, return fire, and kill his opponent is the sort of man we need as president now. Plus, he didn’t take crap from anyone. Remembering what he said about John C. Calhoun what he’d do if South Carolina had carried out its threat to secede, I can imagine his response to Dingy Harry and San Fran Nan…

“A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear. The traitor is the plague.” Marcus Cicero

Aww gee whiz, Ian. You mean to say having the audacity to refuse to march to Congress’s kazoo isn’t a firing offense? Dang! There oughta be a law! [/snark] Actually, there really should be a law, against continuing to serve in Congress after the onset of senility.

Oh yeah, that’s what our founding fathers had in mind. Forget the separation of powers. Stupid.

wytammic on April 29, 2007 at 2:52 PM

All we hear about from the left for six years is how Bushco is dismantling the Constitution and the fourth Reich is on it’s way. Now that they are in power, all the Donks have shown is a prediliction for ignoring the Constitution and trying to take over the Executive Branch.

Ok, I thought I was hearing things . . or rather not hearing things. Let’s play, ‘What’s number 2?’
a. Beat on the Brat like austinnelly said
b. Blackmail
c. number 2 is poopie

I was referring to C, actually.

The man is loco. If you have like minds in the Congress and the Presidency, there is no exercise of a veto necessary.

The separation of powers was created for exactly this reason. If you have two disparate philosophies between the executive and legislative branch, there is 1) The veto; 2) Congress’ ability or inability to override the veto.

Nowhere in the constitution does it say that the President and Congress have to agree. If the Congress doesn’t agree but cannot override the veto, viola! Compromise Constitution style.

Our founding fathers did not live in a utopia. They played politics with naked blades and guns — dueling was commonplace — and made the separation of powers to preserve the rule of law.